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Shawne Williams

Knicks’ Williams Is Far From Home and Trouble
By JONATHAN ABRAMS
Published: December 19, 2010

When the Knicks’ president, Donnie Walsh, informed Shawne Williams that his N.B.A. lifespan had been granted an extension with the Knicks, he offered one strong caveat. “I told him, ‘It’s a different ballgame now,’ ” said Walsh, who kept Williams over the sentimental favorite Patrick Ewing Jr. for the last roster spot before the season. “ ‘If anything negative comes up, you’re out of here.’ ”

Williams, a 6-foot-9 forward, is one of the few substitutes Coach Mike D’Antoni regularly calls upon. After making 10 of his first 12 attempts from 3-point range this season, Williams is again settling into the ups and downs of the N.B.A.

It is a fable to think that atonement arrives through athletics. Williams is in the process of distancing himself from his troubles and resurrecting a derailed career. His past includes several arrests and a desperate plea before a judge for his future — an act that led the former Nets general manager Kiki Vandeweghe, who had traded for and then released Williams, to utter that he was “luckily not our issue.”

Ted Anderson, Williams’s coach at Hamilton High in Memphis, said of Williams, “He’s got nine lives.”

Williams started the season saddled at the end of the bench before flourishing during the Knicks’ recent eight-game winning streak. His shot stopped dropping, though, and his minutes soon did also. But Williams scored 12 points Saturday as one of the team’s lone bright spots in a loss at Cleveland, and D’Antoni vowed to give him steady minutes again.

Before joining the Knicks, Williams drifted among Indiana, Dallas and the Nets. He had troubles at each stop. Three times in Indiana, friends from Memphis ran afoul of the law while in Williams’s company. In Dallas, the Mavericks eventually asked Williams to stay away from the organization.

Authorities in Memphis indicted Williams, 1 of 24 defendants facing drug charges in January after a seven-month investigation called Operation: Lockdown, on eight counts. The Nets had just waived Williams after he reported out of shape. He pleaded guilty to four misdemeanor drug charges, including the possession and conspiracy to possess a controlled substance, in this case, hydrocodone, a codeine-based syrup. Then over the summer he was charged with driving with a suspended license. A passenger was charged with possession of marijuana and carrying a handgun.

“You’ve got one skill, one God-given ability, and you’re doing everything you can to throw it away,” Judge James Beasley Jr. told Williams in August, according to The Commercial Appeal in Memphis. Most of his troubles involved a common thread: Williams would be with hometown friends. With Memphis a day’s drive from Indiana, the hangers-on could and did hang on.

“Really, I had to iron out a lot of wrinkles in my life,” the 24-year-old Williams said recently. “I sat back — even though I wanted a team to call me after the Nets — I knew I wasn’t in great shape” to go to a team.

It was a precipitous fall. In an area rich in amateur basketball, some declared Williams the best prospect from Memphis since Penny Hardaway. Williams’s former coaches speak of a studious athlete willing to learn the game and of a person who engaged in mild mischief.

Williams’s grandfather, Leon Williams, raised him and his brother, Ramone. They lived in South Memphis, in an area blanketed with drug dealers and prostitutes. Ramone, one year older than Shawne, was murdered before Williams entered the N.B.A.

Anderson has known Williams since he was 9. Occasionally, Williams’s grandfather summoned Anderson to discipline Williams. Anderson, like others close to Williams as he grew up, did not recall him having any serious issues.

At one national tournament, basketballs started to disappear and the director threatened to cancel the tournament. Keith Easterwood, one of Williams’s youth coaches, found the balls in the room of Williams and another teammate. Williams said that he could sell the basketballs once he returned to Memphis in order to buy school clothes.

“He always did silly stuff,” Easterwood said. “Perhaps some of it was him and some of it was his environment. But he was always a pretty good kid.”

Arkansas and Kansas recruited Williams. To Anderson’s dismay, Williams decided to play under John Calipari at Memphis.

“I made a lot of University of Memphis fans angry when I suggested he needed to leave town,” Anderson said. He added, “Here in Memphis, it was hard for him to get away from people who he grew up around with who might not have his best interests” in mind.

In an effort to improve his grades and become eligible to play at Memphis, Williams transferred to North Carolina’s Laurinburg Institute for his senior year. The team went 40-0 in 2004-5 and Williams debated forgoing college for the N.B.A. He announced his decision to uphold his Memphis commitment at a nightclub.

After a year at Memphis, Walsh selected him with the 17th overall pick in the 2006 draft. His tangles with the law arose soon after.

Out of the league most of last season, Williams saw his weight balloon. His skills atrophied. In the spring, after contemplating his life, Williams paid his way to the IMG Basketball Academy in Bradenton, Fla.

Williams trained with several players picked in June’s draft. Off the court, he cautioned the rookies on the league’s vices. On the court, he dominated them.

“I changed a lot of things,” Williams said, adding. “Mostly, the biggest thing with me, it was never me. It was just the crowd who I ran with and the people who I had around me. But I wouldn’t say it was a bad choosing of the people, it was just the people I grew up with all my life and I just had to separate myself from that if I wanted better things.”

When asked if the responsibility fell on his shoulders, Williams said: “Most definitely. Nobody made me do some of the stuff I did, hang with the people I hanged with.”

Williams’s confidence to come back never wavered; he had a successful stint with the Charlotte Bobcats in the summer league. It is part of the mind-set that helped spur his path to the N.B.A. and also his troubles.

“Throughout all the adversity I done been through, when it all came when I was sitting at home, not playing, like I said, a light switched on that I know what I want to do with my life,” Williams said. “I want to play ball and have fun doing it.”

In the N.B.A., labels are easy to acquire and hard to dispel. “From the beginning, I’ve been open-minded, and he’s been nothing like what I’ve heard of him,” said Roger Mason Jr., a Knicks teammate.

That is the type of future that Williams is trying to carve out. “That’s how I’m looking at it,” Williams said. “I just want my actions to do the talking for all the off-the-court stuff.”

Larry is not coming back, he didn't have a meeting with Orlando for not reason, yeah he is coming back to the NBA but not to the Pacers, the notion that he is a taking a year off and then come back is absurd.

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Re: Shawne Williams

From the article:

First he says -

“Mostly, the biggest thing with me, it was never me. It was just the crowd who I ran with and the people who I had around me. But I wouldn’t say it was a bad choosing of the people, it was just the people I grew up with all my life and I just had to separate myself from that if I wanted better things.”

then he follows with -

When asked if the responsibility fell on his shoulders, Williams said: “Most definitely. Nobody made me do some of the stuff I did, hang with the people I hanged with.”

How self contradicting can one person be? It was never him? Yet nobody made him do the stuff he did? It was always someone else's fault? How the heck does a person rationalize that?

Re: Shawne Williams

“Mostly, the biggest thing with me, it was never me. It was just the crowd who I ran with and the people who I had around me. But I wouldn’t say it was a bad choosing of the people, it was just the people I grew up with all my life and I just had to separate myself from that if I wanted better things.”

then he follows with -

When asked if the responsibility fell on his shoulders, Williams said: “Most definitely. Nobody made me do some of the stuff I did, hang with the people I hanged with.”

How self contradicting can one person be? It was never him? Yet nobody made him do the stuff he did? It was always someone else's fault? How the heck does a person rationalize that?

My guess is that the legal system has not seen the last of Williams.

How is that self contradicting? At all. It's not. He admits it was his fault he hung out with wrong people. The wrong people influenced him to do not so great things. They're completely separate things.

I'm sure the same could be said of many other people. Peresonally I had the same 'issue' (though not nearly to his degree) and I'd say the exact same thing.

Re: Shawne Williams

How is that self contradicting? At all. It's not. He admits it was his fault he hung out with wrong people. The wrong people influenced him to do not so great things. They're completely separate things.

I'm sure the same could be said of many other people. Peresonally I had the same 'issue' (though not nearly to his degree) and I'd say the exact same thing.

I can understand still keeping in touch with your loser friends that you grew up with, but getting involved in their lives and assisting them in their criminial activity is inexcuseable. I understand that Shawne was "young", but even adults in their early 20's know the difference between right and wrong. Shawne had to know what he was doing was wrong, but he decided to do it anyway because he had to get "steet cred" from his crew.

Shawne is a POS, and I could care less about how he has "changed" and "matured." He is actually a scary guy that I wouldn't want to be left in a room alone with him.

Re: Shawne Williams

I can understand still keeping in touch with your loser friends that you grew up with, but getting involved in their lives and assisting them in their criminial activity is inexcuseable. I understand that Shawne was "young", but even adults in their early 20's know the difference between right and wrong. Shawne had to know what he was doing was wrong, but he decided to do it anyway because he had to get "steet cred" from his crew.

Shawne is a POS, and I could care less about how he has "changed" and "matured." He is actually a scary guy that I wouldn't want to be left in a room alone with him.

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Re: Shawne Williams

Wow! You post about a guy doing good and look what it turns to. I guess a lot people say didn't change is because THEY too have not changed. But some people can and do change, so unless you have a P.I. following Shawne how do you know he hasn't changed? My goodness.....

I'm not perfect and neither are you.

Romans 3:23 For all have sinned,and come short of the glory of God. kjv
Ephisians 4: 32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. kjv

Re: Shawne Williams

How is that self contradicting? At all. It's not. He admits it was his fault he hung out with wrong people. The wrong people influenced him to do not so great things. They're completely separate things.

I'm sure the same could be said of many other people. Peresonally I had the same 'issue' (though not nearly to his degree) and I'd say the exact same thing.

I agree. Recognizing the reasons isn't the same as deflecting blame. "Hey, this toaster has a busted plug" doesn't mean it's a good idea to keep trying to make toast with it because it's "not its fault".

Shawne has issues that can be overcome by making tough changes, but which usually aren't made because the issues are explicitly that he was raised in a way that didn't give him the skill set to make changes of that nature. It's a catch 22.

Does that mean I want him staying at my place or back on the Pacers? **** no. I just think he's correctly identified his barriers which is one minor step toward overcoming them.

I'd almost like to seem him put it together just to justify my claims of his NBA talent. Like NapMenace I thought Shawne was extremely talented and his first year looked further along as an NBA player than Granger.

But I'm also in that camp that doesn't want to see our guys blow it here and figure it out someplace else. To be honest I don't think anyone's done that. Artest hasn't played better elsewhere and is still all over the map. He salvaged a disasterous playoff effort with some key plays. Jackson, a guy I actually like, continues to let the refs get in his head and to make horrible shot selections. Still waiting on Tins to prove anything to us, still waiting on JO to return to that all-star form.